A Following Holy Life. Kenneth Stevenson

but he has a high view of the priestly office, ordination being required for the two dominical sacraments as well as the other five, which he clearly regards as sacramental. They function within a pastoral setting, and a set liturgical context, in which prayer, symbolic action and preaching have a central place. Bishops, moreover, Taylor sees as the successors to the apostles, even naming the ‘angels of the Churches’ (Rev. 2 and 3) as the local bishops, for which he has some support in certain early Christian writings. And in his own consecration sermon, he went so far as to suggest – citing the early theologian Origen, a great lover of angelology – that when bishops are consecrated, they receive an extra guardian-angel, in addition to the one they receive at their baptism. Many a bishop since would relish such a notion!

      In the ‘Collection of Offices’ is a somewhat unusual eucharistic rite, with the Christian East forming an interesting part. These include the Beatitudes at the start of the Eucharist, as in the Byzantine Liturgy (replacing the Prayer Book’s Ten Commandments), and the invocation of the Spirit in consecration. But his style was so different from Cranmer that his influence on the 1662 Prayer Book was at best minimal. The Beatitudes have continued to be used devotionally in the period since, and they re-appeared in the Church of England’s Common Worship (2000) both as a canticle and in preparation for Holy Communion. His baptism rite, however, resembles the Prayer Book structure more closely, but carefully crafted to include covenant theology, the blessing of the water by the Holy Spirit, and a softer line on original sin. Someone with Taylor’s artistry might have hoped to have been involved in the work of liturgical revision at the Restoration. It could be that his ‘Collection of Offices’ was under suspicion among those looking for the restoration of the Prayer Book and nothing more, even though it was only meant as a temporary substitute for it. But his liturgical projects, interesting and innovative as they are, are not where his greatness is really to be found.

      How do we see Taylor now?

The best way to understand Taylor, as with any other theological writer, is to read him – and that is the main reason for this collection of extracts, long after his works have been out of print. In his funeral sermon, George Rust described him, with some understandable hyperbole, as having ‘the acuteness of a school-man, the profoundness of a philosopher . . . and the piety of a saint’. Certainly, he had something of the mediaeval theologian (the ‘school-men’), in being able to argue a case on the basis of mastery of detail; and like others of his time, he was an orientalist, with his knowledge – and use – of Syriac. He also had something of the philosopher, with a mind that could see the relationship between principles and issues, and draw them together. And he could see into the souls of those for whom he cared, with a prayerfulness that could only have been born of prayer and sharp observation. His memory lived on in Ireland in a special way, and it still does, and rightly so.[20] But his overall impact on the wider world was considerable, for example in the profound effect of reading ‘Holy Living’ and ‘Holy Dying’ on the young John Wesley (1703–91).[21] Not surprisingly, the works that have been most read are those that are the least controversial, perhaps because he was more comfortable authoring them.

      Can we discern signs of development in his thought? ‘Great Exemplar’ (1649) does seem to embody the main features of his theology, which was subsequently honed by the dual experience of living through the Commonwealth and the need to respond to the reactions to some of his controversial views. Perhaps he became more conscious of the need to have a more critical use of the Fathers. He seems more confident about them in ‘Episcopacy Asserted’ (1642) than nearly twenty years later in ‘Ductor Dubitantium’ (1660).

      Those characteristics, even in the atmosphere of a funeral oration, paint the picture of the man who emerges from these writings. His uniqueness stems from his ability to see through inadequacies, and to try to draw together the separate threads of theological life that were in danger of falling apart – a feature not unknown in any age, especially at a time of deep controversy. McAdoo, one of his great admirers, persistently regarded him as a great ‘moral-ascetic’ theologian, and with that we entirely agree. Taylor took the risk of drawing together these two aspects of the Christian enterprise. His stress on the importance of free will always stood in tension with his view of God as a moral Being. In some areas, he paid the price for such a risk, writing perhaps too frequently and too candidly, and in ways that could be disturbing.

With whom should we compare him? Of his near-contemporaries, Robert Sanderson (1587–1663), Restoration Bishop of Lincoln, stands out as a moral theologian with similar instincts and aspirations, who undoubtedly left his mark on him.[22] But the two figures he most resembles are contrasting figures, whom we have encountered already, and whom Taylor must have influenced. One is Simon Patrick, Bishop of Ely from 1691, another Cambridge Platonist, a pastorally minded theologian with a flowing pen, who wrote on the sacraments and published many sermons, but who was a less creative and comprehensive thinker than Taylor, yet a more adept ecclesiastical statesman.[23] The other is a different figure altogether, Thomas Traherne, a priest-poet many of whose writings have been recovered, identified and published only in the past hundred years, but who shared many of the features of Taylor’s theology, mystical as well as social, his talkative nature and angular frame of mind, yet who shared none of Taylor’s concerns over church order or sacramental theology.[24]

      We do not write like this today, and nor should we. But Taylor would be baffled by the fragmentation of knowledge that is such a feature of our own age, not helped by the lamentable gap that exists between church and academy. First, his contribution to the evolution of seventeenth-century moral theology was unique, because he was able to ground the exercise in reason and revelation, thus making natural law more accessible to new situations, and rescuing it from the control of a church hierarchy, or the personal whim of the individual’s fervent faith. ‘Ductor Dubitantium’ (1660), after all, ends with a strong warning against legalistic religion.

Then his contribution identified by McAdoo to what we would nowadays call ecumenical theology is shown in the method he brings to such areas as baptism and Eucharist, where ecclesial act and human experience are seen not as irreconcilable contrasts but as a complementary whole, powerful without being wooden, yet personal without being wholly subjective. Taylor’s reading of the Fathers attuned him to the importance of baptismal catechesis, and the significance of ancient symbolism lost at the Reformation, such as chrism; and he saw in the patristic notion of ‘anamnesis’ the true heart of the eucharistic action.[25]

      Finally, however, it is his contribution to devotional theology that is without question immense. If he has a theological starting-point it is in life lived – hence the significance of ‘Great Exemplar’ (1649) and ‘Holy Living’ (1650) – the life of Christ into which we are called, and the life of the believer redeemed by the grace of discipleship. Taylor may be verbose at times in his determination to cover as much as he possibly he can. But he always has the praying, thinking, self-disciplined believer in his sights, precisely because he believes that prayer, reflection, and practical living have the potential to be transformative, not just for the individual but for society as a whole. Like so many of the seventeenth-century writers, Taylor’s aim was to give theology to the laity and to ensure the proper interplay of scripture, tradition and reason in the process. For Taylor, faith and reason have an intrinsic relationship – which is a lesson that badly needs learning again in our time, in a world where the two are frequently driven apart, and the believer and the non-believer – and half-believer − suffer in consequence. For Taylor, such a relationship needed to be worked out in the day-to-day task of Christian discipleship. ‘A following holy life’ sums up all his teaching in the ‘Discourse on Repentance’, by far the lengthiest in ‘Great Exemplar’ (1649). That’s not a bad place to locate it.

[1]Based on various sources,